The inviting steps up to Curtis Johnson’s modest West Bank home’s front door bears a fresh coat of striking hunter-green paint. A black fleur de lis hangs on the home’s entrance, a vestige of his six years as the Saints’ wide receivers coach.

Green is Johnson’s new color, and it brightens the black-and-gold accents that decorate the inside of the house. He was hired in December as the Tulane Green Wave’s 39th and first black head football coach. It's Johnson’s first head coaching job after 25 years of climbing the ranks at various colleges and in the NFL as an assistant.

John McCusker / The Times PicayuneTulane Green Wave football coach Curtis Johnson spent six seasons as the New Orleans Saints wide receivers coach.

Inside, the home buzzes with family.

Today a striking woman, Angel, is in charge. She and Johnson met in 2006 and they married in 2007. Dressed in all white except for the Tulane-green monogrammed stitches at the wrist of the button down shirt, she directs the traffic at home, leading guests through the mass memorabilia that has marked Johnson’s résumé — most notably a football from the Saints’ Super Bowl XLIV victory and another from Miami’s national championship in 2001, intermingled with corresponding glittering rings.

Two 20-something males, Johnson’s son Trey (22) and a friend, dart in and out trying to figure out where to find a motorcycle repair shop. A soft-spoken younger daughter, 21-year-old Angele, hustles up the stairs and nondescriptly saunters in and out over the next hour.

An 18-year-old son and St. Augustine graduate, Justin, wanders in later, and after some prompting, politely points out that the Purple Knights have the best band in the area.

An octogenarian mother-in-law — Angel’s mom Mildred, busies herself in the kitchen, meticulously making a fuss with a homemade display of Tulane-decorated cupcakes. Many days, Johnson’s mother Vera is also in the kitchen, whipping up coveted batches of potato salad.

“This is what it is always like,” Angel says with a smile, glancing to the kitchen to see if her husband is back yet.

A few minutes later, “CJ” emerges in a sleeveless, sweat-soaked T-shirt, apologizing for his tardiness. After biking in the neighborhood — he is coming off knee surgery, or he would have been running — Johnson was stopped by a neighbor, who offered advice on how to turn around the Green Wave, which ushers in Johnson’s tenure Saturday against Rutgers at 7 p.m. at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

Everyone wants to know if and how Johnson will resuscitate a program that hasn’t been to a bowl game in a decade. Then there is the problem of empty Superdome seats on fall Saturdays, a sign of a dwindling fan base that grows weary of the hope springing eternally from fall camp.

Wins are the objective. But how to do that, at a program that hasn’t won more than four games in a season since 2004, is a matter of public debate. Like with his neighbor, Johnson politely obliges all comers and indulges their suggestions.

“I don’t know if he can say no, really. He’s that kind of person,” says Johnson’s pastor, William Brent of the historic First African Baptist Church.

Fatherly lessons

A career assistant coach, Johnson, 50, forged his niche as a top-notch recruiter (luring Pro Football Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk to San Diego State and Indianapolis Colts receiver Reggie Wayne to Miami, among others) and as an X’s and O’s stalwart.

But little is known about the face on the front porch of Tulane athletics other than he doesn’t always choose the easiest route.

How else could anyone explain Johnson opting for the massive undertaking of building Tulane from the ground up, when he could’ve remained a high-profile assistant on a past Super Bowl winner or bided his time for a more attractive college job?

To understand Johnson is to understand his father and namesake, Curtis Johnson Sr.

Curtis Sr. blazed a trail through professional baseball and through River Parishes politics.

The elder Johnson was born on Halloween in 1932, but seemingly never knew fright in his life. After leaving Grambling State, where he played football for Eddie Robinson in addition to baseball, Curtis Sr. swiftly turned his back from traditional paths for black Southerners, as sports shoved him out of New Orleans and face-to-face with the unknown. The experiences the Curtis Sr. had from there turned CJ’s two-dimensional outlook into I-Max theater.

Curtis Sr. was a standout in the Negro Leagues, playing third base, center field and pitcher for the Kansas City Monarchs in the early 1950s.

He signed with the New York Yankees’ organization in 1955, 10 years after Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers, and during a time of heavy racial tension. “Very tough, very, very tough,” CJ said of his father’s experience with the Yankees.

Citing Jackie Robinson as an inspiration in subsequent interviews, Curtis Sr. hit the minor-league circuit of one of Major League Baseball’s most conservative organizations by CJ’s estimation. One of the farm stops was in Fargo, N.D.

“It was a culture difference, but it was good,” said CJ, the middle child and only son of Johnson Sr.’s three children. “It was good because the South back then was a little bit more segregated than there. ...

“He learned so much then, and that’s what he wanted me to do — go out and learn.”

Though CJ’s father never got that call to the majors, he met luminaries such as Mickey Mantle and played against legends such as Satchel Paige. But the real prize came in the form of the lessons Curtis Sr. learned along the way, as he played in Florida and Canada among other stops, until his knee gave out in 1959 and he returned home to the New Orleans area.

Over the next few years Johnson Sr. took an interest in politics, and in 1976 he became St. Charles Parish’s first black councilman since Reconstruction. He served 16 years.

Don’t think CJ wasn’t taking notes of how his father, who died in 2004, dealt with friends and opponents alike.

“(My father) taught me a couple of things,” CJ said. “He taught me that bringing people together is better than alienating. That was number one. Also, you have to deal with everyone — even the ones against you.”

Probably the most lasting lesson his dad imparted was to never balk at intimidating or unfamiliar circumstances.

“He didn’t back down … he welcomed it. He was something else,” CJ said.

‘There’s something else out there’

Experiences taught CJ’s father that his son shouldn’t take the traditional, safe course in life. CJ, who was a standout in track and football at St. Charles, assumed he’d follow his father’s path at Grambling and play for Eddie Robinson.

“I had a cousin who was at Grambling, and we went up there, and it was just the best thing in the world,” Johnson said. “I was short-sighted.”

Curtis Sr. wasn’t.

“He said, ‘You’ve got to get away. It’s a new life. There’s something else out there,’” CJ said.

OK, so where to now?

How about Idaho?

CJ’s cousin, Don Newman, was there. Newman spent his freshman year at LSU before transferring to Idaho to play three seasons of basketball there. Newman went on to become an assistant coach at the San Antonio Spurs when they won a championship in 2005 and 2007 and is now an assistant with the Washington Wizards.

“He was a great basketball player there. My dad made me go to the school that he and Don decided I would go to,” CJ said with a laugh.

The only rule Johnson Sr. had was that CJ had to get away, and Newman clinched the deal. CJ had never even set his eyes on campus before arriving to walk-on to the football team and run track in the early 1980’s.

“I just remember it being so cold there, and just the people were very, very friendly, almost shockingly friendly. Being from a big city, it was different. (I missed) the food, the parents, I’ve always missed Mardi Gras, all the same things, but it was a great experience.”

CJ graduated in 1985 and coached at a high school before returning to the Vandals to coach receivers in 1987. He moved to San Diego State and coached there from 1989 to 1993 — where he met another precocious young coach — Sean Payton.

Payton was a graduate assistant there when CJ was an assistant, “so young I didn’t even have a credit card,” he remembers. They forged a friendship that intersected through 25 years of coaching.

He’d been an assistant under Payton with the Saints since 2006, coaching receivers and helping orchestrate what is widely regarded as one of the best offenses in the NFL. Then the Tulane opportunity emerged.

Never one for conformity, CJ leapt at the chance for his first head coaching gig — albeit at one of the worst programs in the nation the past decade.

“What (my dad) would always say to me is: ‘Hey, I could have gone with the Chicago White Sox and I could have gone (elsewhere) … but I decided to go to the Yankees because it was the best and the most challenging.’ He said, ‘Hey, I learned more in that six or seven years I played than my entire life,’ ” CJ said.

Idaho gave him confidence and worldliness needed to assimilate not only in life but in the wide, wide world of football coaching.

“His value is the wisdom that he brings and the positive outlook that he has, that is his value to me,” Brent, CJ’s pastor, said.

CJ is a deacon in Brent’s church, and there are times he sits close to Brent in church meetings. There is good reason for it.

“One time he said, ‘When you see me coach and I’m next to Sean Payton … I’ve got to keep Sean from getting a 15-yard penalty. So when you see me close to him, that’s what I’m doing,” Brent said. “So when we are at (church) meetings sometimes … he will keep himself close to me, and when he sees things and sees me getting (agitated), he will kick me under the table.”

Composure under the pressure of different opinions, another lesson CJ picked up from dad.

Crazy days

Most Fridays a hamburger and beverage (a Monsoon is the preferred option) with friends Tracy and Richard Boudoin is how CJ and Angel unwind. There has been a host of headaches just as CJ has tried to move his team to the first week of the season.

The team’s best offensive player, running back Orleans Darkwa, suffered a high-ankle sprain early in training camp, and though he is out of the boot and off crutches, it is unknown if he will be healthy enough to start on Saturday.

“It’s not going to be touchdown right, touchdown left all the time,” CJ said. “Life isn’t like that. We’re going to have bumps in the road. We just have to keep the momentum going, keep going, keep going and then we’ll be fine.”

Fridays are a bit of a respite for the CJ and Angel, allowing them to break away and socialize with the Boudoins, the only couple in the Johnsons’ circle with no coaching ties to CJ.

The Boudoins are ardent Saints fans, but their initial reaction to CJ taking the Tulane job was measured. The Green Wave program is better known as a coaching graveyard than a springboard to finer gigs.

“I thought it was scary at first,” Tracy said. “Here he is leaving a dream job — wonderful organization — and Tulane was kind of like eh, is this (a career dead end)? It was a lot of things to be afraid of, but you have to stop and look at who you are talking about.”

CJ wasn’t just interested in becoming a head coach for the first time. He relished the challenge.

“People ask me, why would you go to Tulane?” CJ said. “I say, why would I go to LSU? LSU is already winning. If I went to Tulane, it’s like the best thing in the world. ... If I don’t win, nobody else had (in recent history).”

The plan, however, is to win, and win over fans along the way. CJ has at least one convert, Brent, who has never been to a Saints game. But he will be in the Superdome to see Tulane this fall.

“I’m just not a big football fan,” Brent said. “But I did tell him I would attend Tulane games because I want to support him. I just think it will be good. I just want to offer him any sort of support I can give him.”

All over the city, CJ gets that kind of promise from people who approach him on the street, in grocery stores, at speaking engagements and in his neighborhood.

“If all those people come to the games, then we’ll have more people then the Saints have,” CJ joked.

The humor masks one truth about his latest career move. It’ll be the most challenging thing he has ever done, more so than initially leaving his comfort zone as a teen in Louisiana for Big Sky country.

“He knows it will be an uphill battle, that he has to build, that the team does not have a history of winning, but again he’s up for the challenge.” Brent said. “He has faith in God. He has faith in himself and I personally believe that he’s going to be successful. I believe that.

“He has the spirit.”

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Tammy Nunez can be reached at tnunez@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3405.